GenCon is over. We hope those of you who went had fun. In order to keep from having dozens of near-identical threads about the Con cluttering up /r/boardgames, we'll keep this thread sticky for a while for conversation related to the Con.

I guess this is a more appropriate place for my post-Gen Con impressions of all the games I played:

Five Tribes: Fantastic. Completely lived up to the hype. The game is a great mix of relatively simple mechanics and very deep strategy. I would've bought this if they had it in stock, mostly because Bruno Cathala was hanging out around the vendor hall.

Abyss: I DID buy this game, since Asmodee had stacks on stacks of copies. This is lighter than Bruno's other game Five Tribes, but it was still quite fun, and the artwork is even more gorgeous in person. I got it signed by both Bruno and Charles Chevalier!

Lords of Xidit: This was interesting mechanically, but I'll wait for the reviews. The "programming" aspect was interesting, but I'm not sure how well it would hold up over several plays.

Hyperborea: Ehh...didn't really hold my interest at all. I think this might mostly be because I don't like miniatures games much.

Epic Resort: I wasn't too impressed by this. It was a fun theme and again, interesting mechanically, but the different mechanics felt disconnected and the game never really hooked me.

Samurai Spirit: As I said in another thread, this game was pretty disappointing. Due to the simple card-flipping each turn, most of the decisions you make are very simple and boring.

Temporum: This was one of my early favorites. Completely themeless, but the game we played was pretty fun. I'll be waiting for the reviews, but it's a "possibly" right now.

Panamax: This was OK. The art and design are great, and the gameplay is very interesting, but I'm pretty turned off by the estimated game length - 3 hours for your first game, not including teaching, and 2 hours even with experienced, non-AP players.

Tragedy Looper: Pretty great! We played a scenario and lost. There really isn't anything like this out there, with the 1 vs. many co-op deduction and time-travelling/resetting the game board. This is a maybe right now, only because I'm worried that not being able to play the same scenario with any of the same people would make this pretty damn hard to get to the table.

So, one thing I noticed with Tragedy Looper is that reach scenario comes with multiple things it could be, so all you have to do to switch it up is to randomize the actors and the plots. That could give the game a lot more relay value than just a standard scenario-based game.

I played Abyss and Xidit at the Asmodee booth. Abyss fell pretty flat for me. The theme was totally tacked on and there didn't seem to be a lot of interesting decisions to make. Also it was pretty hard to plan ahead for your turn because the auctions were so random and the board just totally changes between your turns with 4 players. It also seems like it wants to be a lighter game than it is, there are a ton of confusing rules minutiae and systems bolted together. Maybe I just missed something about the strategy or the game plays totally different if you go the whole way through (the staff stopped us about halfway through because there were a lot of people waiting to try).

I liked Xidit a lot. The programming was fun, and there was a lot of player interaction with little downtime as you are all always going and need to care a lot about the other players' actions. It was also pretty easy to explain, and the victory condition was interesting. I am a little worried that it won't hold up to multiple playthroughs though.

EDIT: Oh I also watched a bunch of Five Tribes being played, although I wasn't able top play myself. Looks fun, but I am kinda put off by "slaves" being one of the resource cards :\

Yeah, Abyss definitely isn't a killer game. It's a pretty good, light game with amazing art that more than makes up for any deficit in gameplay, as far as I'm concerned. I could look at those Lord cards all day.

Also, yes, I would absolutely say that the game gets better as you get deeper into the rounds. The mechanic with the card flipping and push your luck is pretty boring, since you can pretty much always guess which cards people will and won't pay for. It's once you get past those first few rounds where people start doing other stuff that it gets more interesting.

Haha, I had a pretty funny conversation/debate with someone about the slaves in Five Tribes when I was playing that game.

Can we talk about how fucking incredibleRio Grande Games is?? They were the star of gencon for me. They were upstairs above the west doors (above the card castles) and we randomly wandered in there Thursday afternoon so that I could teach my friend some dominion before one of the free qualifiers for the nationals. What we found was that they had most of their catalog available and completely free to play, and if you even looked at a game hard one of the incredibly helpful and friendly volunteers came right over and offered to teach you how to play. They also had coffee, water, and soda available all day long, AND (and it's a big and) they served free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to people playing games. Needless to say we spent a TON of time in there, and bought a couple Rio games to support this kind of awesome behaviour. Not to mention, while nearly every fucking booth in the exhibit hall was selling games at full MSRP, Rio was selling them at or below wholesale cost (rivaling or beating amazon prices).

Iello also had a large portion of their catalog free to play and incredibly friendly and helpful workers as well, not to mention free King Of Tokyo qualifiers to nationals, and tons of free promos. They had multiple King of New York copies (got to play a 2p game, and while fun it will definitely be improved multiway as with the original). They also had a giant KoT in the exhibit hall that I would have loved to play but alas, you can't always get what you want

I believe you my be talking about C and C games. They have the twice daily raffle with the crazy sales. I have seen them at other cons and they are very flexible on price (dominion big box for $52). At Gencon they didn't want to budge at all.

Yeah.. they are dropping the ball so hard on this game, it's been how many months now & I've yet to see a starter out in the wild, it's getting to the point now that I just don't care about the game anymore.

That is the one game I was looking for and couldn't find. I bee-lined to the booth when I got in to see if any where left, but they didn't even bring it. Honestly, I now believe they are making is artificially rare and I have lost all interest. They would pretty much need to drop it in my lap for me to consider playing it.

The funny part about what FFG did was Star Wars is drive me out of the market for those games. I am even going to be selling all my X-Wing stuff. They are flooding the market with so much I can't keep up and there is SO much great stuff on the market I am not going to be dumping all/any of my money into anything Star Wars at this point. There is just too much to keep up.

Why treat it as an all or nothing thing? Just choose the game you enjoy the most and keep up with that. It sounds like you already have x-wing stuff. Why would the introduction of new stuff diminish your enjoyment of what you already have?

Man I had zombie fatigue when this was on KS. Skipped it on principle and now I totally regret it. It looks amazing. Still, I'll be more interested when a different PHG crossroads title gets announced.

I bought the base set and the two expansions for Golem Arcana. I played an hour game at Gencon and had fun, and I think my son will play it with me because of the tech, so I think it was worth the purchase (especially if/when they add remote play and co-op), even though it does seem to be getting a bit of hate on the forums.

I also bought a few games from smaller companies. Light/fast stuff that I think will hit the table a lot. Traps and Treasures, and Ruckus.

I loved the artwork on Abyss, but didn't get a chance to play it. I'll be looking more into it soon because it looked really fun, and I heard people saying good things about it.

My first Gencon, and it was a total blast. I'll definitely be returning.

I thought Abyss was beautiful and I really wanted to like it but I found it pretty simple and a bit boring game play wise. It may be because the demo didn't last long enough for us to use keys but it just seemed like a game of collecting different currency types and then spending said currency to gain a few underwhelming abilities.

I actually picked up Abyss before getting a demo. The rules are pretty straightforward and I ended up playing the game about five times over the course of four days as I waited on events or more people to show up to the pugs.

The gameplay is very simple as you work toward obtaining enough allies (resources) to persuade Lords to your cause. The Lords grant special abilities and some come with keys. You can also gain keys when killing monsters instead of taking an Allly (once the monster tracker reaches a certain point). Once you get three keys, you get a location that grants you bonuses at the end of the game at the cost of losing the powers of the Lords with the keys.

Pearls are the currency and can be used to purchase one Ally on an opponent's turn as well as to finish out the cost for a Lord.

Let me preface this by saying I had an overall amazing time- met some awesome people, played some great games, and spent way too much money.

Holy shit the console and arcade rooms were by far the biggest rip and letdown I've ever experienced. Last year there were tons of consoles set up, rock band, and numerous tournaments going on and you could SPEND ALL DAY IN THERE FOR FREE! Yes tourneys required an entrance free (no biggie) and yes last year you paid to enter the arcade room- but the selection wasn't bad at all for the price.

This year it cost you 20 bucks for an all day pass and you'd be allowed into both the console room and arcade room- sounds like an OK deal... Bit steep.. But my god they had 5 arcade machines in a huge room, a tablet on a table, and a quarter sized ping pong table set up on a kids table covered with plastic... The console room was a mismash of consoles running single player games, two manchies poorly run on projectors, and a hand full of rigs going with smash brothers.

I joined my friend in the mario kart tourney and we paid for an hour of play on Thursday and Friday but the hourly cost was just as shitty as the selection (6 bucks an hour? I forget).

This was the only bad part of GenCon, I really loved relaxing and gaming in the console room last year but this year it was by far the worst thing I've seen in my 4 years of being there.

I usually watch my friend take part in the Street Fighter tournament but this year he didn't register. I was really glad he didn't register once I saw how they handled those rooms this year. I wouldn't have been able to just hang out and watch.

Most of my time was spent between the First Exposure Playtest Hall and the free-play area in Hall D. I played dozens of pre-published and currently-on-KS games, in addition to ...

Innovation (second edition). First time playing, and I am hooked. I wish I had picked this one up. It would have been the only game I purchased all week!

Coup and Skull, during the Saturday reddit meetup. GOod times. I think we played another game, but I'd rather not remember...

Cinque Terre and World of Tanks: Rush with Epsi. I might play the former again. The latter... not so much!

The Resistance twice with Whiskey, and once with Jamey and his Stonemaier peeps. Two good memories here:

Playing with Whiskey, the Indie demo monkey, and two others. The Indie guy and I are spies. I put us both on the first team, which he proceeds to fail. You can imagine the rest :)

Playing with Jamey. He and I are two loyalists in this 8p session. In the third round, I put all the spies (which I had guessed/deduced) on the team. He saw what I was doing and convinced the rest to approve the mission. We "won", but then Merlin was outed for some subtle thing that his friend picked up on. So that was a bit unsatisfactory, but good nonetheless.

Machi Koro with @GameWireGirl. The four of us on the Ophir team has found a somewhat quiet corner to work on final files for the printer and other internal stuff. After about 45 minutes, "BeBo" shows up and gawks as our board. She and the art drew quite a crowd, and we ended up just hanging and playing games. She had a NIS copy of Machi Koro, which we were all too happy to play!

The best pre/unpublished game that I saw - and I was in the demo/proto room 8 hours a day - was Feudum. It's a pretty complex euro game with amazing art. The only event that I registered for at the entire con was a playtest of this game. Really excited to see how this develops.

I don't know if you saw this but it's a video that I did with Rodney from Watch It Played for Machi Koro. I can't wait for the play mat my team worked on to hit the stores. let me know if you're going to BGG.con and I'll bring you one!

Legendary: Encounter Man this game was cool. It played like Thunderstone Advance: Numanera, the dungeon crawl aspect, mixed with Ascension, their deck building mechanics, all wrapped around the classic Alien movie series. You literally play through the movies. It was super fun and super hard.

Warhammer 40K: Conquest LCG Great new LCG. Plays unlike any card game i have ever played. Each round you are fighting for control of a planet, but there are 5 planets available to land units on and taking the other planets allows you to draw more cards and generate more energy. Great job fleshing the universe into the cards. You build a deck of 1 main faction and it's 2 sister factions.

Greed A smallbox game of making money any way you can in the 60s. It s quick, but i felt that there had not been enough polish to the game. Card text was sloppy and unclear. It had a draft-pass mechanic like 7 Wonders, which is a mechanic I like, but it really hindered the ability to properly strategize.

The Battle at Kemble's Cascade Don't mind the title, this game is amazing. It is a classic 80's topdown, bullethell arcade game in a box. The game has several trays that act as the screen and you play as a ship advancing towards the top killing enemies and opponents along the way. As the game progresses, you will gain power ups, earn points, and unlock achievements, all while slowly advancing towards the "Level Boss". The game is fun, cutthroat, beautiful, and wildly entertaining. My best pickup of GenCon!

Did anyone get a chance to play Panamax? I'm dying to hear people's thoughts as it's one of my most anticipated gencon releases. I'm hovering over the pre-order button for my local game store right now!

Great thank you! I'm the type of person who goes crazy for games like Panamax. I'm almost positive I'll like it, but I wanted to hear some more opinions before preordering at my local store. I hope you continue to enjoy your copy :)

Panamax was OK. The art and design are great, and the gameplay is very interesting, but I'm pretty turned off by the estimated game length - 3 hours for your first game, not including teaching, and 2 hours even with experienced, non-AP players.

Sat down for a play through at Stronghold. Panamax was not what I thought it was going to be ... It takes so long because there is just so much to it. The gent that taught us said it took 3 play throughs to get 'nuances'. I personally doubt it would hit the table 3 times. If you have any more questions, fire away.

Oooh, this is so good to hear! I've been hovering over the preorder button on Stronghold's site for the last day or two.

I'm really interested in how the market works, and the logistics of transporting the goods. Also, I love love LOVE the idea of having company funds separate from personal funds, and being able to invest your personal funds in other companies. That way, even if you run your company into the ground, you can still win the game by managing your own money wisely. Such a smart "catch up" mechanic!

But the game feels like it's still in prototype, with a really busy board that doesn't feel well-thought-out. I've read the manual, which is pleasantly short for a big, complicated game, but let's get real here, it has a 23-step setup. TWENTY THREE STEPS! That's insane. The concept of rail lines feels unrelated and like it's been bolted on for some reason that's not totally clear to me yet.

So, having only read the manual and seen some videos, it feels over-complicated (not in a good way), like it needs another round of edits to be streamlined down to the core game. So I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on the game, since you've played it!

There isn't actually a market. All of the goods have defined values (indicated by pips on a die) given to them by the contracts that generate them. The values sort of earmark goods for certain places, be it the railroads, a cruise ship, or a cargo ship.

The stock system is very simplified compared to something like Imperial, but shares a similar feel. While you can't actually lose control of "your" company in Panamax, you will likely want to generate money with it and pull it out to your personal cash as dividends. This is muddied, of course, by other players buying into your company when they see it doing well. Overall, I though it worked very well.

I would say the board is both beautiful and functional. There are a lot of rules to learn, but once you've learned them they make sense and the board's iconography works well to help you remember them. The setup really isn't that bad; you just have to put all the stuff in their places.

As I said above, there are a lot of rules, but I felt the game flowed very smoothly once everyone got the rules down. It is about the complexity of Vinhos or CO2, if you've played those games. You could cut it down, but I think that would just change the target audience, not improve the game.

I love shipping games, or any games with boats personally. The theme of Panamax mixed with all those dice has me very excited. It's a shame the game seems to take so long though :\ Luckily the people at my weekly meetup constantly play long games of Eclipse, Through the Ages, Terra Mystica etc. so I doubt the time would be a problem for us. I guess what I want to know is how you felt about the mechanisms? Ignoring how long the game took - did you find yourself engaged? Did you see plenty room for differing strategies or was there a clear path that everyone takes?

The mechanics: you are an employee not the company, which means you are managing two piles of money. You have your income and your companies. Keeping straight what earned what pile of money was not easy, lots of referring the the rule book. The dice seemed to just be a random alternative to putting workers on limited actions. YES every game will be different based on what you roll but at the end of the day it is a way to limit actions just like every other worker placement.

Engaging: unfortunately no BUT here is my context for the day: 4 hours in the car, 4 hours on the show floor, last game on the first day. Theme aside, it seems like a few games in one which is why it takes so long. If it was 'load ship, push ship through, collect money' I think I would be invested ... stream lined but it's not. You have military vessels, luxury vessels, vessel hiring, vessel construction, stock markets, personal finances, tons of dice fiddling (not dice rolling, love chucking dice), TONS Of iconography and NO action phase/icon help sheet.

Strategies: absolutely, 4 companies to choose from and each ones progression in the game gets them different bonuses at different times dependant what country they work with and how often. Then couple in the random dice roll at the beginning of the game. You will need to adapt your play style to the changing conditions. The options for strategy are a bevy if you can just figure the whole big picture out: walk away with the most personal money.

As a fan of games like Troyes, I'm used to the multiple mini-game feeling. It took me 3 or 4 plays of Troyes to really understand how each section of the game compliments the others. I have an inkling Panamax will be similar in that regard.

No reference sheet is definitely a mark off, but I feel like it's not bad enough to warrant passing on the game. I'm sure there will be some print-out ones on BGG after a while.

I'm very glad to hear that strategies can vary though. That's always what I'm worried about when I look for new games to buy.

Just two purchases for me this year, both very good games for solo and the wife and I -- Heroes Wanted (with both expansions) and Run, Fight, or Die. If I had enough spare money I would have gotten the Legendary Aliens game and Shadows of Malice.

Legendary: Encounters (Aliens game) was amazing. They added a few mechanics which I highly enjoy. Everyone has a "Class" card they hold now. In my game, I was medic and it gave me a special card which allowed me to heal wounds from other players. Which leads to another new mechanic, health. You now take damage, and have an HP value which, when met, you die and are out of the game. It is pure Co-Op, and lacks any form of points that the other Legendary games have. They've also introduced a new type of card which the name of is escaping me. It is similar to Maria Hill, and Madam Hydra where it's cheap, and gives recruitment. However, it is able to be played on someone else's turn. There are multiple cards with this same card's keyword. Any of them can be played on another player's turn to assist them. It really helps foster the feeling of team work.
Another new mechanic is enemies come from the deck face-down, and depending on their current position must be scanned. They are scanned through special card effects, or by paying a certain attack value depending on where they are.
There are a couple of other new mechanics, but these are the ones that stuck out to me the most.

Except in the situation where one of the players takes damage, and draws a Facehugger. Players have 2 turns to save that player, or else the player then turns into an Alien player (gets a new player card, gets the Alien deck), and is against everyone else. (You can play without that option.)

It also has the option for a secret traitor element if you enjoy that sort of thing.

I had a few of my RPGs I was scheduled for fall apart, but had a great time none-the-less. Wound up getting quite a few demos in and had a more hall time than I had planned, but that was ok. Came home with Heroes Wanted and Winter Tales as well as the D&D 5e Players Handbook and Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure. Had a blast, was great to see old friends and meet new.

I used to DM a group in middle school like a decade ago. I heard it was simpler and wondered if it might fly with a group of 4 people, 3 of whom have never played tabletop before. Or would one of the starter sets be a better speed?

The game manages to capture the feel of the World Overview from the new XCOM game. While I'm unconvinced by integrating apps into boardgames, this one seems to have done it well so far; they use it to generate events you only have seconds to deal with, which increases the tension at that time.

In the end though, the game is a push your luck game based around rolling successes. The variance for those successes is too high for my own tastes, but it's a solid game for those who want a good thematic experience.

Really cool and very very difficult. Not difficult to learn, but difficult to win.

The demo was done so that you went through a whole round with no timers and everybody learned how the game worked. Then you went through the remaining rounds with the actual timer. Say you had 15 seconds as the Commanding Officer to decide whether or not to fund more soldiers or buy more interceptors. If you took more than 15 seconds then the next person would lose time for their task based on how long you went over your time limit. If you took far too long then the next task or move would be skipped entirely. So if you took too long decide which troops you wanted send to battle as the squad leader then you would send no troops and potentially the Head Scientist would miss out on his step/turn of researching new tech for your soldiers.

It was critical to work together and to think fast as the alien threat level was rising in multiple countries. It's not like other co op games where you can sit there and debate on what to do (Pandemic) and I think Quarterbacking will be near impossible since there simply isn't any time for it, but I could be wrong.

The demo was on easy mode and it seemed like hard mode. The designers told me they had only beat the game once out of 15 tries on expert mode. The iPad (android and browser) app for the game will make things difficult for you too. If it sees you struggle with invasions in Asia then it will hit Asia hard etc. Overall it was very frantic and difficult, yet exciting. I think the price point is $60? I could be wrong, but this is an insta-buy for me.

Epsi sums it up really well. The cool thing the app does is respond to how you are playing/how well you are doing and tailor each round. For example, typically you'll get your budget for the round first so that you know how much money you'll be spending. If you let too many UFOs hang out in orbit, future rounds will have events occurring out of order as your communications is scrambled so you don't know what your limitations are. That's a small example, but it's part of how the app can do things that would be much hard to implement with cards/dice.

Kemble's Cascade was awesome. I had to stand around for 20-30 minutes to get a demo in. I wasn't that impressed while watching it so I almost skipped out, but the creators were running the next demo and invited me to play so I couldn't turn that down. It ended up being so much more fun to play than it was watching other people play. It felt really fast paced and I really felt like I was in a 1941 style arcade game. Everybody was having a great time in my demo and I'm excited to play more. I wish I could have bought it after my demo because the creators were signing it, but I had already spent too much money at that point :P.

Was that the cooperative game where you are protecting the villagers? I played that yesterday, and I thought it was the most unique co-op I've played in a while. Asian themed games aren't usually my jam, but the mechanics were so cool that I'm considering picking it up.

Semi-cooperative? In what way? I'm in the beta for the digital version (which could have differences) but it's not even remotely cooperative in any way. It's competing for VP with zero player interaction. That's my biggest gripe, actually.. these characters are all allies, why isn't it cooperative?

Okay, I'll keep an eye out for something like that in the digital edition. Don't recall seeing the ability to do anything last time my friend and I were in the same location, but I'll know to look for it next time.

Though admittedly I'm not really sure why you would. You get most of the VP from the missions, do you not? Why help the other players you're competing against get more VP? From a gameplay perspective it doesn't really seem to make much sense, but I might be lacking some context, too.

From what I understood from the demo, the player who helps you complete your mission gets more XP than you do. And the support missions can only be completed until you've finished the main quest on that card. I think it's a matter of balancing reward vs time.

Honestly, it was my biggest disappointment of GenCon. It kind of seemed like someone said, "make a Witcher game" and they just slapped some mechanics on it. All you do is walk around the map collecting one of 3 colored tokens and fighting monsters (which is just a dice role, although the dice roles can activate some card abilities). I played as Geralt and completely wrecked everything I encountered from the beginning. It did seem like there was some player interaction that might be interesting but it didn't happen in my demo because the demo-er purposely won in order to "put an end to this" as he said even though no one was waiting to hop in and we had only played for about 10 minutes. It reminded me of one of the Elder Sign games, but executed poorly.

Really? I scheduled two events everyday and still had no time to do everything i wanted to do!
Arrived wednesday night, waited at will call while chatting about games.
Thursday, dealer hall, played games, demo'd games then stayed up late for a zombicide event.
Friday same as above plus a true dungeon run, spooning meeples event, and the AEG event.
Saturday was more the same plus a meet up with some gaymers and late night two rooms and a boom event, followed by some werewolf.
Sunday back to the dealers hall to see what was left.
Besides all the gaming, i met some really great people and ended up making friends enough that i added two of them on fb.

What did everyone pickup at GenCon. Here's what I grabbed. Pathfinder was the surprise break out for me. I went in to try it, ended up picking up a class deck and playing 3 scenarios of adventure 1 "Lost at Sea". I am totally hooked and looking to join my local group. http://imgur.com/VWEmedF

Reserve your hotel now. If you want a room thats close (walking distance) they go pretty fast. However, you can save quite a bit of money by booking a hotel 10-15 minutes away. If you go that route, park at the Colts stadium if there isn't a game happening. It's a little further away, but its works out because there's always space there, and you spend less time hunting for a spot then you would save on walking. Alternatively, you get get a spot on the bus routes and use those. Indy actually has pretty good public transportation, but most of the routes stop running at 10 or 11.

Pack light, you're probably not going to play a single game you haul down with you. I don't bring anything with me at all to the convention center anymore, after a few hours of walking the vendor hall, I end up really wishing I didn't have things to carry anymore, and there aren't many places to securely store things.

Don't eat the convention center food, it's nasty and expensive. If you want a good meal, there are plenty of good places to eat within walking distance, but they can get a little crowded and hectic at times. If you really just want some quick food, take the skywalk over to the mall food court.

I've found myself doing quite a bit of walking. You can probably spend a whole day just walking around the vendor hall. The convention center itself is quite large, I'd say it takes a good 5-10 minutes to work your way from one end to the other, and then don't forget that some events are moving out of the convention center and into the surrounding hotels. So if you are going to pack anything it should be a very comfortable pair of shoes.

A couple of years ago I went through the GenCon hotel service they offered and got a fantastic room in the Marriot across the street. I previously had stayed in the Omni, and it was amazing how saving even a couple of blocks of walking every day helped with planning my convention.

This year we stayed at the Conrad. There were skyways that connected the hotel to the mall to the convention center which was nice. Little pricey, we booked in January so didn't get any conference rates, and their valet parking was expensive (no other option there for keeping a car parked for three nights).

We parked for free every day on capitol near the I-65 overpass. You have to walk like 15 blocks but if you don't mind, you get to see a bit of the city and the capitol every day. Totally worth it in my mind but I know some people just can't / don't like to walk long distances.

While you can reserve a hotel NOW by directly contacting the hotel, the Gen Con hotel block opens in January. I've always had success in getting the hotel I wanted, and there's a well-run waiting-list.

The average connected hotel is around $220 a night (with the 17% hotel tax)

damn, it was my first time going and while it would have been sooooo nice to just walk across the street to the hotel and crash, that's such a steep price point. We stayed 15 miles away or so in greenville (greenfield?) at I-70 and mt. comfort Rd. at the KOA camping for just under $100 total for 3 nights. After scoring free food most of the con we kept it under $150 a piece including the badges but not counting game purchases

One of the secrets for doing a nearby hotel on the cheap is the Hilton Downtown. It's just 3 blocks away from the ICC, so it's fairly easy walking distance, but it has most 2-queen-bed suites: 2 beds plus a hide-a-bed in a separate room with a decent table, TV, etc. Makes a great room to gather together for some gaming, plus you can get 5 people to share that room. A four night stay is around $950 with tax - meaning each person has about $190 for housing.

Something I didn't know is that Exhibitor's Hall was only open from 10am to 6pm each day.

My brother and I got their after 7 on Friday and had a booked solid schedule of gaming on Saturday. Which only left us time on Sunday to browse. Depending on what you are looking for, it might be out of stock by then.

People have already hit a few suggestions for basic amenities and travel plans. The only thing I would add is that I usually pack at least one lunch for the day to save money on food (and time from waiting in lines to get it).

Other than that, the exhibit hall is a lot to take in and definitely has value, but my first time going I didn't really explore the events and spent most of my time there. I really missed out because the events are where the heart and soul of the con is. You can get some demos in, find a couple deals, maybe talk to a couple interesting vendors, or pickup the newest game on the floor, but the events are where you get to meet and engage with other gamers. This year my friend and I went into the game library in the morning due to being late for an event and met a pretty interesting guy who knew a ton more about board games.

This year I did a couple different events. I played Spycraft: Flashpoint (an RPG where you're playing a team of spies), Space Cadets, and a few minis (Kings of War, Mercs, and Battletech). I also took a class on painting minis since I'm thinking of starting that up. And I went to the game library for a few hours, too.

I also went to a seminar by Scott Westerfeld about illustrated novels and their decline which was really interesting to learn about. There are always a lot of writing seminar's since Gencon's Writer's Symposium brings in quite a few sci-fi/fantasy writers to the con. Seminars on things like worldbuilding and character development to stuff like how to write about food or weaponry. These tend to be hit or miss, but they're also free so you can easily leave if the seminar isn't worth your time.

Some other memorable events I've done from past Gencons include LARPing as a dungeon monster (probably wouldn't do it again but it was interesting as a one time experience) and an 80's action movie RPG which was hilariously fun.

Shadowrunner: Crossfire - Really meh on this game. The demo game felt like there wasn't much to the game past matching symbols.

Penny Press - Fantastic game with a couple of layers to its strategy. Did feel a little bit like the first player had an advantage over the last player, especially when it came time for everyone to begin going to press, but that might be the result of four players who were totally new to the game. I will absolutely be picking this up when its released later in the year.

Trains - Not new, but after picking it up last year and not having many opportunities to play, it was nice to get a game in.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game - Same as above, it was nice to get to play with some new folks. I'm interested to see how the society league they are starting will work out, if my local shop signs up that is!

1750-France vs. Britain - Cool game that fills a niche, short and portable wargame. Really nice art on the cards, the free promo card was beautiful. This is one I'm thinking about picking up because it will fit in a bag or suitcase nicely for when you're traveling.

Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue - So, I played this because I was walking by the demo table and the guy running the demo seemed a little lonely, especially compared to the guys across the aisle from him with the Armada and Imperial Assault demos. It's a retheming of Knizia's Penguin with pictures from the HBO show. Fun quick game. At $10 I would have grabbed a copy if they had any in stock.

Legendary Encounters: Alien - This was awesome. One of two games I picked up at GenCon this year (I usually wait and buy from my FLGS unless something really blew me away, was available as a pre-release, or came with special promos). I hadn't played Legendary Marvel, but had heard great things. Very quick to learn, captured the feel of the Alien franchise, and tough as hell (by the end of the demo, 2 members of our party were dead, we had two xeno-morphs striking at us every turn, and I had three facehuggers giving me some love and we were only in stage 2 of 3!). Looking through the rules, I like that there are options to mix them with Marvel Legendary, looking forward to X-Men vs. Aliens in the future.

Ortus Regni - I want to begin by saying this is the other game I bought at GenCon. These guys had a bizarre ad campaign at GenCon. They sponsored the bags everyone got, but didn't put their names on them. Throughout the day you would be somewhat cryptic announcements made on the loudspeakers about the game that I don't remember actually naming the game. Then they had all of their demos and sales in a separate room far from the dealer hall. It's a medieval themed deck builder where each player begins the game with 91 cards from which to build a 24 card deck. Each player represents an Earl who is looking to best their rivals all while trying to protect themselves from and take control of rampaging vikings. The game has multiple strategies one can take (military, intrigue, control of the church, control of the vikings, etc.) packed into this small game. Oh, and it's the most beautiful looking game I have ever seen. Cards are all full bleed art with images from medieval and early modern illuminated manuscripts. The core game is two player (expansions make it 3-4 and 5-6) and comes with a lot of beautiful pieces.

Article 27 - This was a fun game. Players simulate the UN Security Council as they attempt to construct and pass proposals that will be acceptable to the most players and score you the most points. the central component is the ability to bribe your fellow players in return for them supporting your goals. Unfortunately, there were only three of us so we didn't have too much conflict. It was pretty easy to find a way that everyone was mostly satisfied, and no proposal was ever voted down. I could see this getting really intense at 5 or 6 players.

I demoed Shadowrun: Crossfire after my group already bought a copy so I could explain the rules to everyone. I think the demo did a very poor job of showing the strengths of the game. After the demo I was pretty meh on it. It seemed simple but I still thought we'd enjoy it for the theme. I know our demo-er cherry picked obstacles that were easily beaten and put fun cards out on the black market. I know he did that so he could show the games rules clearly, but it really didn't showcase that a lot of the fun is in the challenge of the game.

After a few plays of the crossfire scenario I have to say it's really quite enjoyable. It's really hard and we have only been able to win once out of 4 playthroughs. Out of all the cooperative games I've played this is the only one where I feel like we really were all working together. It takes so much planning between the players to get through the scenes. And we still end up getting our asses kicked because we don't understand the game well enough yet.

The mechanics may not be the most complicated ever but there is as lot of tactical requirements that make up for that in my eyes.

I pre-ordered Infinity Operation Icestorm last weekend. It's easily the product I'm most excited about that was released at Gencon. I'm terrified of painting though. I know it's going to drive me crazy if I can't get them to look as fantastic as they deserve.

I'm stressing out just thinking about it.

And there was so many other games that I'm excited for. Abyss, the new level 99 game (devastation of Endines creators), Xidit, an so many others.

One game I haven't seen anyone mention here yet is Foretold: Rise of a God. I got to try it out briefly at GenCon and I came away pretty impressed. The graphic design and artwork isn't the best, but the game seems pretty solid at bottom. There's a tower defense kind of feel to it, along with the light deck building and tile-laying elements. If that sounds interesting at all to you, I definitely recommend checking it out.

This was my first Gen Con & I feel like I didn't spend my time wisely on Thursday & part of Friday, I sort of found a good groove on Saturday though.

And I left with a couple of regrets: not getting a copy of King of New York & the promo card, not getting a copy of Five Tribes, not getting a chance to demo Spirits of the Rice Paddy.

I really wanted to check out SotRP, but every time I stopped by the Ape Games booth I was told it was too busy to run a demo for it.

Other than that I had an absolute blast! I mean it was awesome! We played some great demos - Istanbul, Valley of the Kings, HellRail, Yashima, & Titans of Empyrean to name a few. I walked away with most of my list (minus the two above & Bang! The Walking Dead) and I snagged a copy of Shogun with the expansion for only $35.

Oh oh oh! Plus I got the best Cuban sandwich from the Gypsy Truck. It was absolutely godly. GODLY I TELL YOU!

Edit: I also have an extra copy of Doomtown: Reloaded. It is weird how that happened.

We played it at the AEG game night, before we found out it was in our swag box.

So VotK is pretty neat. The fact that the cards can be used for either money, actions, or victory points gives you a lot of options on your turn. The learning curve comes with the timing of the game, when should you start entombing cards for VPs or if you should hold on to them to buy some of the higher priced items. Plus the points all depend on how many of the set you collect. For a small game, it has a lot going on.

For a mini deckbuilding game it works incredibly well, easy to pick up and learn, and can be pretty fun. On BGG I rated it as a 7. It is very enjoyable and worth keeping, in my opinion.

Tragedy Looper was the game to play in Gen Con for me.
Very interesting take on the murder/mystery deduction by adding Time Travel and a human mastermind vs three protagonists. Since its a scenario game every experience is different and you can even make your own scripts too! With time travelling making a comeback this year (X-men and Edge of Tomorrow) this game is at the top of my list.

I liked the more obscure games that no one seems to be talking about. Volt, Ghost Pirates, Livestock Uprising... oh my goodness, livestock uprising. I have to own this game (it isn't available yet excpet print and play... and I'm considering it). They're doing a lousy job of selling it in my opinion.

Here's how Livestock Uprising works. In the first phase of the game you're gathering resources, but your units can only gather a few different types of resources, the rest are unavailable to you until you use your resources to buy new units that unlock new resources that you can use to buy other units that can unlock more new resources. Escalation. Then, at any time you think you have an advantage you can hold you gather your armies to the barn and they voltron together to make a super unit that can then wreck the other players stuff, forcing them to form their super units or die. But in a 3 player game there's a chance that one team could hold out and gather a few last minute resources while the other 2 player squabble. Or two weaker units could gang up for a team attack against a stronger unit. What other game has this?

Sorry, didn't mean for this to be all about one game. I guess it impacted me harder than I expected. I'm gonna go buy the PnP version right now and spend my weekend making it.

I really wish I would have got to Five Tribes. And everyone I was hanging out with was going ga-ga over Tragedy Looper. But, in all it was a great time and I got to meet a bunch of great folks I've only known by BGG avatars and meet up with some friends I only get to see once a year.

Looks like we had the opposite experiences with Five Tribes and Istanbul. I played Five Tribes and loved it, but I also wish that I had a chance to play Istanbul. By the time I got over to AEG's booth on Sunday, they'd stopped demoing it since they had sold out. Pretty lame.

I only went on Friday and came in wanting to play XCOM, Witcher, King of New York, Zombie 15', and Dead of Winter.

I left having played these for the first time -

Cash n' Guns (played with designer and artist) - Purchased

Splendor

One Night Ultimate Werewolf - Purchased

Sheriff of Nottingham

Cosmic Encounter (played with designer of newest expansion)

Takenoko

I was kind of bummed I didn't get to play the games I came for, but only having one day meant I couldn't stand in one place too long waiting. Iello only had one game of Zombie 15' going and it was on a giant miniatures neighborhood board. While that was cool, I thought it was really strange they didn't have a couple more tables set aside for the box version. I did love all the games I played though, and got to stop and chat for a couple minutes with Tom Vasel which was pretty cool. In the end I also picked up the Downwood Tales expansion for Mice & Mystics, caught the Genie Mac truck for dinner when the line was only 3 deep, and had a wonderful day at Gencon 2014. Looking to up it to all 4 days next year.

I'm surprised you didn't get a chance to play The Witcher! When I was demoing it there was literally no one else who wanted to play, we ended up having one empty chair and one chair with the demo-er in it. Once my game was done no one else asked for a demo for another 10 or so minutes. Honestly though I wouldn't be too upset if I were you, it was pretty underwhelming.

XCOM was really fun however, but if you got a chance to watch it for awhile you probably got the gist. It wasn't one of those games that feels a lot different to actually sit down and play.

Gencon really needs to start limiting its ticket sales like Comicon does. The crowds are getting out of hand. Its been a few years since I've been and it went from being able to get into stuff once you get there to being screwed if you didn't catch day 1 of event reg. :\

Only game I bought was Myth, which I don't even think was released at gencon. Just looked like fun.

Side note- fuck wizkids and the wacked way they dealt with lines to get their gencon promo stuff.

I actually didn't mind the crowds as much this year as I did last year. I think that little bit of extra exhibit hall space helped a lot. I spend most of my time walking around demoing games. Last year I had to wait a lot longer to get on a table, this year I only had to wait more than 15 minutes once. The day that was the roughest for me was actually Sunday which was unexpected because I remember the crowd thinning out a bit, but it seemed really packed. I know it's Family Day so kids get in free but I never noticed that in previous years.

A lot of these games have been around for a while, but it was my first time getting to play most of them.

EDIT: The only thing I bought was Ca$h'n Guns and I waited till Sunday (FINALLY AFTER NEARLY 2 YEARS AND FOR A DECENT PRICE!). I just wanted to play games, but I did put stuff on my want list for when my FLGS gets them in.

A fun party deduction game kind of like Resistance. I think it scales to 50+. There are two teams, red and blue, and two VIPs the President (blue) and a Bomber (red). All affiliations and roles start out secret. The teams are divided into two groups and go into separate rooms. Each round a leader is selected in each room, that leader picks hostages to exchange with the other side. You may reveal just your color to anyone, or your whole role, with some exceptions. The Blues win if the President and the Bomber end up in separate rooms at the end, Red wins if they're in the same. It's pretty fun, and get's pretty crazy when you have so many people there are lots of extra roles going around with their own agendas.

I actually got to play at a Shut up Sit Down event and Quinns was teaching us the game.

I'm surprised to see some of my favorites not being mentioned, but these were my new gaming highlights for the convention (names link to their BGG profiles):

Dead of Winter: I know most people who currently own this got it about a week before as a pre-order, but they had a good amount at the show that sold out in 2.5 hours on Thursday. I brought my copy with me and everyone I introduced to it absolutely loved it! It was also a blast hanging out with /u/JonnyRotten to play and talk about the game. One of the best of show. The stories you take away from this game are amazing.

Evolution: I was fairly certain I would enjoy this one going in, but was unprepared just how much. It is a very easy concept and game to explain, but there are a lot of different decisions to make since you can use the same cards in five different ways. They were taking pre-orders for new copies but also auctioning off their opened-that-day demo copies each day, one of which I nabbed for myself. I am still impressed that they got a world-renowned nature artist to do the art. It really brings it to life.

Cthulhu Wars: This was one of the games I wanted to play most at the con and man oh man did it live up to my expectations. Obviously the "miniatures" are huge and awesome, but the game itself is super solid. Each faction's power is so high in different ways and you would think that would get out of hand but they contrasted and complemented each other perfectly, in terms of game balance. I didn't think it possible but I am even more excited to own it now than I was before Gencon.

Eclipse: Obviously not new, but I bought and played it for the first time and I am in love. Absolutely fantastic game, once you get past the fairly steep learning curve.

TMG had a slew of games to demo and I tried the upcoming Harbour and Scoville. Both games are very fun in different ways. Harbour is quick and easy to pick up with a lot of meaningful decision making with a relatively short play time. Scoville is a fairly deep strategy game wrapped in a fun setting with absolutely awesome components. Very solid mechanics and turn flow in Scoville as well which make it easy to play and give it little downtime, if any.

Legendary: Encounters was also very fun. If you have ever played the previous Legendary games the mechanics are largely the same, but they have made it so this game has a much higher focus on co-op (no victory point comparison at the end) and it seems to me at least that it is much harder right out of the box. The theme is applied very, very well and if you are a fan of the Alien series (and I am, but really more of a casual fan) you will absolutely love how it's done. Played this twice and plan to pick it up later at some point.

I went for the first time ever on Saturday and was completely overwhelmed. There was so much to do and so much to look at. I went in with a very loose idea of what I wanted to play and buy, but I didn't really accomplish much. I was mostly going for people watching.

My friend's cousin is a writer for Pathfinder and he gave me a bunch of "generic tickets" to play games, but I never really figured out where/what I was suppose to use them on! :/

I kept hanging around booths wanting to demo some games, but couldn't figure out if there were lines, or appointments or what. I only ended up demoing 3 games: Machi Koro, Coup Reformation (which I promptly bought), and The Bravest Warriors Card Game. I also bought The Duke which I have wanted for awhile.

Next year I'll plan ahead more. Probably go with friends that are more into games.

Also I will say that GenCon's website and event programs need a major overhaul.

Still had a blast tho. I live in Indy, so it was fun to just have the streets alive with pure nerdom for a weekend!

I live in Indy too and this was my first Gencon. I'm really glad I got the four-day ticket. I didn't really have any idea exactly how much stuff there was to do until I got there and looked through the program book. I agree that the website is absolutely terrible for finding event and program info.

Just so you know for next year, demos in the exhibition hall are not scheduled/ticketed events. There are no appointments, it is first come first served but there's no real line. So you can just kind of clump up by a table that is currently running a demo and wait until they're done. If other people were clumped before you they'll get to sit first, but most of the popular games have a couple demos running at once. Although it might seem like there is a big group waiting, it's often worth it to stand around because once the demo is up a lot of people disperse or they're in a big group and one of them will demo while their friends watch.

I don't think there was a single demo this year that I didn't get to sit down at the first table that freed up while I was waiting. At really popular booths you might have to wait at the most 30 minutes, but most of my demos I sat down in less than 10.

I'm not entirely sure yet. I actually just recently got into painting miniatures and kind of want to practice some more on my board game pieces before deciding. But All Quiet on the Martian Front looked really cool to me. But I'd like to get in a longer play of both Bolt Action and All Quiet before committing to one or the other. I'll probably wait to get event tickets for both next year as well as get some more painting practice under my belt before fully deciding.